Time to turn the page

-Librarian retiring after 48 years with St. Joseph County Public Library.

-Librarian retiring after 48 years with St. Joseph County Public Library.

December 29, 2005|JUDY BRADFORD Tribune Correspondent

SOUTH BEND A slew of Sue Grafton paperbacks waits to be processed, along with more than a few copies of Clay Aikens' memoir, "Learning to Sing." She's also sending back a stack of CDs that have been recalled. "The manufacturer put some sort of anti-theft program in them, and they really mess up your computer," says Judy Godfrey. It's all in a day's work for Godfrey, an acquisitions technician who is retiring this week after 48 years with the St. Joseph County Public Library. Among current staff, she is the library's longest-employed staff member. She started working for the library in 1957, as a page. "That's what we were called back then. People would bring the books back in, and it was my job to recard them, and then put them on the cart for someone else to reshelve." If you're old enough to remember those cards with the due date stamped on them, then you might be old enough to remember when libraries had just books in them. Godfrey, a resident of Granger, has worked in acquisitions since 1984. She's seen many changes: the addition of music to the library's collection, and the progression from vinyl to cassettes to CDs. She saw the advent of microfilm, microfiche and the fax machine. When movies came out on videotape, she recalls they cost around $110 brand new. The biggest change, she says, has been computers. But the library still must buy books and tapes and other materials to loan out to people. "I'd say we're kind of important," she says of the acquisitions area. "We order all the materials for the library, except newspapers. Everything new comes into us first." While technology changes rapidly, tastes in reading really haven't changed all that much. "People have a tendency to stick with the popular stuff," she says, "and we try to buy whatever is going to get circulated the most." In the '60s, it was "Catch-22" and "The Feminine Mystique." In the '70s, "Love Story" and "Rabbit Redux." The '80s brought books by Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel and Thomas Wolfe. Self-help books characterized the '90s, at least in nonfiction. For children, paperback serials have always circulated well. Opening up boxes and checking in all the new materials has always been a favorite part of her job. "Some of us say it's like Christmas every day," she says. There have been some funny moments, though. One day, in the late 1960s, she opened up a box and found it filled with used clothing -- a lot of men's pants and shirts. "Maybe someone wanted to give it to Goodwill, and it got mixed up with the shipment to us. We never did find out what went wrong." When Godfrey started in 1957, the library was particularly proud that year that it had acquired a complete film file of the South Bend Tribune, from its first edition in 1873. That's according to "The Library at the Bend in the River," by Mary Waterson, which also indicates that the library was bulging with volumes; some 10,000 volumes had to be sent to the old Oliver School for storage. Godfrey went to work at what was called "the castle building." The old library, built in 1895, looked like a castle with its tall steeples and arched doorways. She remembers most the old wooden floors. That building was torn down in 1960 and replaced with the current building at the same location on South Main Street in South Bend. She has seen a lot of changes in the world of work, too. When she started at the age of 17, girls weren't allowed to work past 6 p.m. After she was married, and pregnant with her first son, James, in 1966, she had to resign. There was no such thing as maternity leave. But just a few months after giving birth, the library called and asked her to come back. The same thing happened with her second son, Andrew, in 1970. She had to resign when she was about three months pregnant. But then she was rehired later that year, and worked in cataloguing. She's also worked in circulation, in the bookmobiles and at the LaSalle Branch. And she's always been happy. "I don't think I would have been happy doing anything else. I love to read, and I love having an overwhelming number of materials around me. I can't imagine myself having done anything else." But she does imagine herself relaxing a little in retirement. "I'm looking forward to staying home, and not having to go anywhere or do anything if I don't want to. Or, if I have to do something, just leaving it until the afternoon." An Elvis Presley fan and memorabilia collector for the past 25 years, she also would like to visit Graceland again. "I've been there three times, but I have a friend who has never been there, and I'd like to take her."